In a novel set in Seattle, Montana, and Alaska but centering around a single family, one man strives to uncover his father's darkest secrets so he can learn to love himself. 75,000 first printing. Tour. Celebrated for his stirring, clear-eyed memoirs and novels of Montana-- Dancing at the Rascal Fair , This House of Sky , and most recently Bucking the Sun --Ivan Doig vaults over the mountains in his new novel and lands in the midst of Seattle's fin-de-siècle coffee and computer culture. Mitch Rozier is an oversized, Montana-born, divorced, fiftysomething environmental columnist for a once-hip weekly newspaper on the verge of going under. Lexa McCaskill is his scrappy, earthy, no-nonsense "spousal equivalent"--a "compact Stetsoned woman in blue jeans," also from Montana and divorced, who makes a handsome living catering swanky parties for Seattle's software plutocrats. Doig has a fine time satirizing the excesses and absurdities of "Cyberia" before he abruptly shoos his characters back to Montana: Lyle Rozier, Mitch's Stegner-esque father, wants to involve his son in one more ransack-the-land scheme before leukemia kills him. The wary standoff between father and son works on many levels: as a deeply realistic clash between two fierce, disappointed men; as a symbolic confrontation between the Old West and the new--Lyle's frank, freewheeling exploitation of Montana's vastness versus Mitch's helpless reverence for the environment; and as a brief, brilliant history of how people have lived off and with the land in 20th-century Montana. All of these strands come together in a stunning climax played out against the glorious backdrop of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. One of the great novelists of the American West, Doig proves here that he is just as adept at conjuring up the vagaries of our shiny new cities as he is at taking the measure of rough, tough, old Montana. Mountain Time has everything going for it--great characters, breathtaking scenery, heartbreaking family feuds, wicked humor, a page-turning love story, prose so perfectly pitched you'll want to read it out loud. And there's something new for Doig aside from setting--a serene, twinkling levity. This is the work of a master having a hell of a good time. --David Laskin Mitch Rozier is an aging baby boomer "half a century old and working for a giveaway newspaper" in Seattle, where he spends his days wondering about the future of his job as an environmental columnist and his disappointing personal life. His children from a previous marriage are strangers, and his relationship with plainspoken caterer Lexa McCaskill, sister of Mariah (from Doig's 1991 Ride with Me, Mariah Montana), is on rocky ground. Summoned home by his ailing father, Mitch travels to small-town Montana, where he is soon joined by Lexa and Mariah. There, Doig returns to more familiar territory as he plots the resolution of a decades-old conflict between father and son against the backdrop of the Rocky Mountain wilderness. Doig clearly enjoys poking fun at Seattle's decadent cyberculture, but he is at his best when writing about Montana, contrasting the differences between those who want to exploit the land and those who want to protect it. Not Doig's best novel, but essential reading for fans of his "Two Medicine" trilogy.ACharlotte L. Glover, Ketchikan P.L., AK Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Readers of western literature treasure Doig's Two Medicine country trilogy for its remarkable grasp of both place ("the unbeatable way the land latches into the sky atop the Rocky Mountain Front") and character (the grit of the ranchers, forest rangers, and firefighters who spent the last century carving hard-won lives from Montana's often inhospitable landscape). Now Doig returns to Montana for a coda to the trilogy in which the baby-boomer descendants of those rugged Montanan individualists attempt to come to terms with their history and their lives in a very different world. Set in both Seattle and Montana, the novel tells the story of two transplanted Montanans, Mitch Rozier and Lexa McCaskill, sister of Mariah (from Ride with Me, Mariah Montana, 1990). Mitch and Lexa, living overbusy lives in Seattle, are summoned back to Montana by Mitch's father, Lyle, who is dying of leukemia and anxious to sell his land in the Rockies to a gravel company. The table is set with issues: Mitch's crisis prompts a fissure in his relationship with Lexa, aided and abetted by Mariah, who joins the pair for the deathwatch. In a marvelous set piece of nature writing, Doig takes his three principals on a hike into the Rockies, where they plan to distribute Lyle's ashes. Conflict escalates, tying together unfinished familial dramas and more contemporary boomer-age angst. Doig lets his penchant for poetic prose get the best of him on occasion, but fortunately, the grittiness of his characters more than offsets the florid authorial voice. A worthy addition to Doig's impressive saga of the twent